UK schools hit by smut hack


UK primary school sites are being targeted by sleazy hackers in an attack that has reportedly resulted in hardcore porn appearing on web pages bearing school logos, reports The Register. Twenty schools’ sites have fallen victim to the spoofed or defaced web page porn assault, the Times Educational Supplement reports. Many of the sites use Moodle, an open source content management system that is used to create online learning sites, sparking the theory that flaws in older versions of the package have been used to mount the attacks. Moodle, whose development and marketing team in Australia is assisted by consultants and integrators across the world, is working with schools to investigate the attacks. "We’re concerned about this issue since the defaced sites were apparently Moodle sites," a Moodle representative told El Reg. "We’re trying to find out more about the spammer attack and whether they used a known Moodle vulnerability or exploited some other issue on that server to change content on the site." Schools hit by the attack include St Dunstan’s Catholic Primary in Kings Heath, Birmingham. The attack means that when you search for the school returned results include links to a "bogus site that bears the school’s name but is filled with hardcore pornography". Content filtering technology and firewalls mean it is unlikely that the offensive material was seen by any children, at least from within school…

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